Presently, various functional polymers with conductivity have been developed, including a group of polymers utilizing .pi. conjugated electrons. These polymers are represented by phosphorus-paraphenylene, phosphorus-paraphenylenevinylene, phosphorus-thiophene, phosphorus-aniline, phosphorus-pyrrole, and the like and are known to have a conductivity ranging from 1 to 1.times.10.sup.5 Siemens per centimeter (S/cm), which is approximately equal to the conductivity of metals.
However, once conjugated bonds have been formed, the above-mentioned conductive polymers become insoluble even in a solvent and therefore are very difficult to process by molding. The polymers are difficult to process into thin film, film, wire, and the like. Also, these polymers experience a decline of conductivity induced when they are left in the air for many hours.
Another polymer material having a polymer matrix packed with such conductors of metal fine grains such as metal powder, metal fiber, carbon black, and the like only has a conductivity of 1.times.10.sup.-4 to 1 S/cm. In the polymer material, conductivity is ensured because the conductors are in contact with each other. Unfortunately, the degree of the contact varies greatly in the matrix which results in resistance distribution.
Since metal fine grains permit most of their atoms to be used to form a surface and they have a large proportion of atoms exposed on the surface, it is known that they are highly active physically as well as chemically and have markedly different properties from bulk metals that are not fine grains. Also because of the huge surface areas that these polymer materials possess, which are caused by the metal fine grains, these polymer materials have been conventionally attempted to be used for catalysts, heat exchange system, specific conduction material, magnetic material, photoelectric conversion material, vital material, drug material, and the like.
Due to their high reactivity, the metallic fine grains are difficult to handle; for example, they are readily ignited, exploded or they themselves are resintered, aggregated, or make their sizes varied. In addition, they also change in physical and chemical properties which leads to very few industrial application.